RSC, ACS offer new open access options for authors

In the last year, two major chemistry publishers have expanded their open access options.

The Royal Society of Chemistrycontinues to offer its “Gold for Gold” vouchers, launched in 2013, which allow authors to publish their otherwise “closed” articles as open access articles without charge. The Libraries receive a limited number of vouchers based on the cost of providing RSC journals at MIT, and we distribute them on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have an article in the RSC publication process now and would like to make it open access at no cost, email rscvouchers@mit.edu with your name, the title of your article, and the RSC journal you’re publishing in.

The American Chemical Society recently announced a new series of open access options for authors that include an open access journal, more flexible reuse licenses for articles, and, for the rest of 2014, free deposits of NIH-funded ACS articles to PubMed Central.

There are four main components to the ACS open access program:

ACS Central Science, an open access, peer-reviewed journal to launch later this year, will publish 100-200 articles annually across the chemical sciences. There will be no subscription fees to read the articles, nor any author processing charges to publish in the journal unless authors want to distribute articles under a Creative Commons license. CC licenses allow authors to modify their copyright terms so that other people can use, share, or even build upon a work, depending on the license authors choose. Authors can distribute ACS Central Science articles under a Creative Commons Attribution license for a fee of $500 for ACS members and $1000 for non-members in 2014.

ACS AuthorChoice, in which authors pay a fee to make articles open access, has been available to authors for several years. In 2014 ACS expanded it so that authors can now choose immediate or 12-month embargoed (AuthorChoice+12) open access. Other changes include:

For NIH-funded authors: In 2014 ACS is giving authors a free AuthorChoice+12 license and will deposit the ACS version of record to PubMed Central on their behalf. Authors need to acknowledge NIH funding when they publish. Starting in 2015, authors will need to pay for a PMC deposit of the ACS version unless they use Author Rewards (see below).
Note: There is never a charge for authors to deposit their final manuscripts to PMC themselves.

ACS Author Rewards: The corresponding author of each ACS article published in 2014 will receive two credits of $750 that can be used (individually or combined) to offset charges to make new or previously published articles open access. The Author Rewards must be used by the end of 2017, and the eligible corresponding author can transfer credits to co-authors or other colleagues.

ACS Editor’s Choice: Each day, ACS makes one newly published, peer-reviewed article openly available to highlight work of public interest. The chosen articles can be read for free, and their authors receive ACS AuthorChoice publishing licenses for no fee.